How much time do you spend in meetings every day?  If you’re like most of us, it’s a big percentage of your time at work.  Is all that time worth your while?

Here are some tips for the person calling the meeting — to make meeting-time more meaningful:

• Only invite the people who really need to be there.  You probably don’t need a cast of thousands — especially when many are not even sure why they are there.
• Clearly state the purpose of the meeting in your invitation.
• Prepare a detailed agenda — with time-boxed subjects, expected outcomes and the responsible party for each item.
• At the start of the meeting, repeat your objectives then be specific and explicit about what you hope to accomplish.
• Either appoint a facilitator to keep you on track, or be very disciplined — stick to the subject, keep to your time table and don’t waste time.
• Take notes so you can follow up with outcomes as well as any action items that need attention.
• End the meeting on time or, better yet, a few minutes early.  Shorter is definitely better than longer!

Like email, I don’t think we can avoid meetings.  But if they are efficient and well-run, they can be time well spent. 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 5:00 am and is filed under World of Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.